The reason your Broncos have not won a playoff game in six years is the same reason so many recent sideline photographs of Mike Shanahan reveal that angry Barney Fife vein popping in the coach’s neck.
Dumb football.
“What’s a smart football team?” Denver running back Mike Anderson said. “The answer to that question is really pretty simple. It’s a defense that creates turnovers and an offense that don’t give turnovers. It’s a team that wins the battle between the tackles. That’s how you can get to the ultimate goal at the end.”
If the Broncos play it smart this season, their record can be 12-4. They will win the division. They should be Super Bowl contenders.
Which brings us to Anderson. He is the smart answer to the most crucial question facing Shanahan: Who will do the heavy lifting and start at tailback for the Broncos?
Send in the Marine. Assign Anderson the duty. No running back by committee. Nobody is as well-suited for the job as Anderson.
Not Tatum Bell, not Quentin Griffin, not Ron Dayne and certainly not Maurice Clarett.
Want the Broncos to win? Start Anderson.
“I know all the stats and how this team as a whole struggled, especially in goal-line situations,” said Anderson, injured and unable to play a single down last season. “I’m so excited I can bring something to the table. I’m more excited than the day I got drafted by the Broncos.”
Anderson does not dance. He runs downhill. If you love football for the violence, Anderson’s No. 38 is the jersey you should be wearing to Sunday worship of the Broncos.
He hits the hole and any linebacker crazy enough to get in Anderson’s way with the same explosive force.
Want Jake Plummer to throw fewer interceptions? Put the football in the steady hands of Anderson with the game on the line during the fourth quarter.
Want to reap full benefit from the advantageous field position promised by the leg of new punter Todd Sauerbrun? Hog the ball, with a grind-it-out attack at which Anderson excels.
Want to stop cursing Denver in the red zone? For all his speed, Bell trips over the 10-yard line. Anderson scores touchdowns.
Want to see the Broncos win a playoff game at home instead of another dreary trip to Indianapolis? Call Anderson’s number 250 times this season, then smash the AFC in the mouth.
The lone trouble with starting Anderson is his style raises more welts than heart rates.
He’s a grunt, in the best Marine Corps sense of the word.
After rumbling for nearly 1,500 yards on the ground as a rookie in 2000, however, Anderson’s career has gone the same way he attacks the line. Straight downhill.
In the four seasons since coming out of nowhere to be named the league’s top offensive rookie, Anderson has not run for 1,500 yards. Total. The statistical graph of his career points due south.
How did it all go so bad so quickly for Anderson? Let us count the ways. There was a humbling switch to fullback. An embarrassing suspension for violating the NFL’s substance-abuse policy. The painful tear of his groin muscle.
At age 31, rapidly approaching the two-minute warning for your average pro back, Anderson knows his time for chasing the dream is running out.
Yet where the bitterness could have taken root, Anderson instead wears a smile.
“I’ve always believed in myself,” said Anderson, sweating profusely after a Tuesday practice under an unrelenting Colorado sun. “I’m living the dream right now. I’m back on the football field. Giving myself a chance.”
For now, he sits atop the depth chart as Denver’s featured back, which has been the real glamour position on this team since before John Elway retired.
There is a suspicion Anderson might be doing little more than holding a temporary spot in the huddle, taking the hits for any criticism Denver’s offense will hear during exhibition games, leaving Bell to step in as starter and hero when the regular-season opener against Miami draws nearer.
Back in the day, remember how quarterback Bubby Brister was the fall guy in August for the ascension of Brian Griese? Shanahan knows how to deflect pressure from young offensive players for as long as possible.
Anderson, however, does not fear the competition. From anybody.
“The dream for me?” Anderson said. “As a team, you know where we want to go.”
Anderson craves the dream so badly he can taste it, yet cannot quite coax his mouth to enunciate the dream, as if that might be a jinx, causing all his best-laid plans to vanish in thin air.
So I said the words for him.
“The Super Bowl?” I asked Anderson. Is that where he sees this dream ending?
“Yeah,” Anderson said. “Getting there. And getting after it.”
Then, he took off running. Places to go. A job to win.
In the NFL, a man being chased dares not look back.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
